Online Conferencing Framework

[TOC]

Overview

This framework provides a possible way to implement the online meeting project.It is not the only way to implement the project. If you want to code by your own, then you can just ignore this framework.

There are three parts of the framework, i.e., the Client, the Server and others. You can refer to these files for more details.

Client part

• client_sockets.py: The base class of client sockets is provided in this file.
  • You can create different sub classes based on this base class
  • Or you can complete this super class as the only client sockets.
• client.py: This is the main client file. You should run this file as a client. A simple CLI is provided in this file.
  • You can implement the GUI and totally ignore the code of the CLI part.
  • Or you can modify the CLI as you like based on the provided code.

Server part

• server_sockets.py: An example server socket class which is a threading class is provided.

  • You can define different server sockets
  • Or you can use this example server as the only server sockets

• server.py: This is the main server file. You should run this file as a server. A multi-threading framework is provided in this file.

  • You can implement concurrency based on the provided multi-threading framework
  • Or you can use other ways to implement concurrency
  • You should also complete the Meeting class in this file
    • The Meeting class should contain information of active meetings, the members of each meeting and so on

Other files

• CONSTANTS.py: Define constants only in this file. You should import this python file in other python files if you want to use the constants in this file.

Project Implementation Tips

1. You can either use one socket in both client and server, or multiple sockets for different types of messages.
2. If you use multiple sockets in the client, you need to map these sockets to the one client in the server so that you can deal with message from the same client conveniently.
   • One easy way to do so: Bind the port of clients. For example, the base port is xxx and next port is xxx+1... In this way, if the server receives information from the port xxx+1, we can know that its base port is xxx.
3. You can implement the feature of concurrency with different methods:
   • Processing
   • Threading
   • Coroutine
   • IO multiplexing

Possible Bugs or Warnings

1. If you are using the Mac OS, it would throw a warning when you try to use GUI (e.g., opencv) in a threading and hence you might not be able to see the GUI like this:

   

2. If you are using the package struct among different OS (for example, the Mac OS and Windows), some formats might have different sizes. For example:

# windows
>>> a = struct.calcsize('L')
>>> a
4
# macbook
>>> a = struct.calcsize('L')
>>> a
8

So you need to be careful about it.

3. When you try to run this project https://www.lanqiao.cn/courses/672, you might directly lose the video connection. Please check if you can open the camera via opencv: self.cap.isOpened(). If you can not open the camera, please firstly check your camera. If it works, then please reinstall the opencv.

4. Please use conda to install the pyaudio package.